Book Club: Let's Talk About "We Do Not Part," by Han Kang

The Book Review

The New York Times

Books, Arts

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The novel “We Do Not Part,” by the Nobel laureate Han Kang, involves a pet-sitting quest gone surreal: It follows a writer and documentarian whose hospitalized friend beseeches her to take care of her stranded pet parakeet on an island hundreds of miles away. When she arrives, the writer finds not only the bird but also an apparition of her friend, who has a devastating history to tell. On this week’s episode, the Book Club host MJ Franklin discusses “We Do Not Part” with fellow Book Review editors Lauren Christensen and Emily Eakin.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times book review, and this is the book review podcast.
0:13.7	Every month, on the last Friday of the month, we come to you with our book review book club,
0:19.2	which is a roundtable discussion about a title,
0:22.2	new or old, that is hosted by M.J. Franklin. Last month, we discussed Samantha Harvey's
0:28.3	Orbital, which won the 2024 Booker Prize. And this month, we have the latest novel to be
0:34.9	published in English than the most recent winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Hong Kong.
0:40.8	I'll let M.J. Franklin take it from here.
0:47.5	Hello, and welcome to another book club episode of the Book Review podcast.
0:52.1	I'm M.J. Franklin. I'm an editor here at the New York Times
0:54.8	Book Review. And for this month's Book Review Book Club, we're talking about We Do Not Part
0:59.8	by Han Gong, and translated by E. Yawon and Paige Ania Morris. This felt like a book that the
1:06.5	universe was just telling us to read. First, last year, Han's 2016 novel, The Vegetarian, was named
1:12.8	one of the New York Times' best books of the 21st century. A few months after that, Han won
1:19.0	the Nobel Prize in literature, becoming the first South Korean writer to receive that honor. And then
1:25.2	a few months after that, in January 2025, we do not part was released
1:29.7	in the U.S. So it felt like we were just getting all of these signs to dive into Han's work,
1:34.5	life spoke, we listened, we made We Do Not Part our book club pick, and that is what we're here
1:39.2	today to discuss. And joining me in that conversation are two of my incredible colleagues, Lauren Christensen and Emily Aiken.
1:47.2	Both Lauren and Emily have joined the book club before.
1:50.1	Lauren was here last a few months ago, I think at the end of 2024 to talk about small things like these.
1:55.6	And Emily was here a few months ago at the start of 2025 to talk about our evenings.
2:00.4	Lauren, Emily, thank you for coming back.
	...

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